Lawns can be beautiful showpieces if they are properly cared for. Lawn maintenance can be a battle. Most every lawn requires periodic cutting. Some of us treat our lawns to encourage grass to grow greener and faster by applying fertilizer and insecticides and watering our lawns during dry spells. Ironically, well treated lawns require more cutting in order to keep them under control. Lawn mowing machines make grass cutting easy, especially in open areas. However, most every lawn includes any number of inanimate lawn mowing obstacles such as mail box posts, light posts and fence posts.
The invention of the string trimmer all but eliminated the use of manual grass clippers to cut grass surrounding posts. String trimmers work because the string head spins so fast that the strings become cutting instruments making string trimmers very effective for trimming grass around obstacles such as posts. A landscaper must be very precise, however, in order to trim all of the grass growing around a post with a string trimmer without nicking and damaging the post. Most of us lack that precision so we either leave the grass closest to the post uncut or we barrel in and cut all of the grass and damage the lower portions of the post in the process. Such damage can take quite a toll over the course of a season or two.
In a patent search directed to the subject matter of the present invention, the following US Patents were noted: D413,495; D498,994; 44,238; U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,931,602; 3,571,972; 3,906,664; 4,648,203; 4,858,378; 5,085,001; 5,323,557; and 5,502,921.